Analytics

Friday, May 27, 2011

Fixed Laptop/Jo Millar

Jo Millar was interesting since she has some experience teaching in Asia. I believe that teachers who have taught Europe as well as Asia always manage to have a slightly different methodology. This could be me making things up, but thus far it has been proven true.

So, she had taught in Vietnam for two years (and France) but now Spain is lucky enough to have her. She works in Alcobendas (all I actually know about that city is their handball and volleyball teams). According to the biodata she "completed the Delta and is particularly interested in collocation, learner autonomy and classroom management with young learners."

There are two things to look at with collocations (Strength and Frequency). Collocations are important because they help student make predictions based on text (without having fully read it).

Example: It's the opportunity of a ...

Most people will guess lifetime, that's because this is a strong frequent collocation.

Collocations are useful because: predictions are useful and a real life activity (we don't actually listen to every word people day we fill in the gaps, chunks of language are more memorable than individual words, students fluency is increased as the language tends to sound more natural, and it can reduce the amount of direct translation a student uses.

She went on to give some practical ideas for using collocations in class:

Having a chart where students check off collocations that make sense (a super small example):

Food Shower Meal
Quick NO YES YES
Fast YES NO NO

Do a prediction with a text and then listen to it (focus on collocations)